OF LITERATURE. 



XXXV 



the Rhine, partly on the borders of Austria and 

 Hungary, belongs to the age of Attila ; * and the 

 portraiture of those stormy days is drawn with too 

 much truth and knowledge to allow of our fixing 

 the date of the real author much lower than the 

 next generation. It is a tale of impassioned love, 

 of war and revelry, of joy and woe, of glory and 

 fate, remarkable at once for the variety of its 

 colouring and for the unity of its plan. If inferior 

 in the development of its action, and the vividness 

 of its representation, to the works of Homer, of 

 what other epic production, of any country or 

 era, must not the same be affirmed ? 



The Book of heroes seems to have been 

 refashioned by the hands of the same Henry of 

 Ofterdingen, already mentioned, and by those of 

 his eminent contemporary, Wolfram of Eschen- 

 bach. Although made up of an assemblage, in 

 four parts, of different knightly legends, the 

 burden of the old national songs, it yet possesses 

 a central point in the person of the principal 

 hero, Dietrich of Bern, another name for the great 

 Theodoric. The whole abounds in strokes of 

 the imaginative and the wonderful, and speaks 

 loudly for the vivacious and exhaustless fancy of 

 the ancient bards. After exploring these monu- 

 ments of their ability, it is impossible to be 

 surprised at the honour in which they were held, 

 or the rapture with which their hearers were 

 affected. The sparkling eyes, the irrepressible 

 tears, which are represented as attending their 

 performances,f show not more plainly the sen- 

 sibility of the audience than the magic of the 

 strain. 



Equally distinguished, and equally worthy of 

 distinction, were the SCALDS of Scandinavia. 

 The lives of these famous poets were as full of 

 incident as their poetry. Ever in the train of 

 princes and gallant adventurers, in war or peace, 

 by sea and land, they chanted their rhymeless 

 verse for the solace and encouragement of heroes. 

 With the exception of a few hymns to the gods, 

 their oldest songs or Sagas seem to have been 

 all of an historical import. Such were the themes 

 prescribed to them at those, festive entertainments, 

 at which the pleasures of the banqueting tribe 

 were accounted incomplete without some poetical 

 tribute to their own exploits, or to the fame of 

 their ancestors. In the Icelandic EDDA, how- 

 ever, the richest monument of this species of 

 composition, the theological element of their 

 poetry, shadowed out in the most picturesque and 

 fanciful legends, is predominant. In the latter 



* A. D. 450. 



t See, in the historical remains of Priscus, his account of 

 Attila's reception of the Roman ambassadors. Part I. p. 205. 

 tfieliuhr't edition of the Byzantine Writer i. 



parts of that singular work, there are some traces 

 of an acquaintance with classical mythology, and 

 with the Christian doctrines : but in the earlier 

 portion of it we find the unmixed spirit of the 

 Teutonic creed; a spirit naturally fostered by 

 the muse of Scandinavia, since in that region 

 heathenism longest lingered, and most reluctantly 

 gave way to Christianity. The conversion of its 

 inhabitants was not fully achieved until the tenth 

 century : the Edda appears to have received its 

 present shape between the ninth, when the Nor- 

 wegians, disgusted with the tyranny of Harold 

 Fairhair, first established themselves in Iceland, 

 and the thirteenth, during which Icelandic free- 

 dom expired. But in this instance, as in that of 

 the poems before noticed, the substance of very 

 ancient lays has evidently been preserved under 

 some external alterations. 



Such was the poetical state ; that is, such, in 

 one of the highest modes by which intellect 

 reveals itself, was the intellectual state of 

 Europe ; down to the age of Charlemagne. 

 While in the once famous seats of arts and arms 

 scarcely a ray of native genius or courage was 

 visible, the light of the human mind still burned 

 in lands, whose barbarism had furnished matter 

 for many a sarcastic stroke of classical pens. 



The character of CHARLEMAGNE, J with whatever 

 vices it might be stained, had two rare and excel- 

 lent qualities : in spite of a youth and manhood 

 spent in warfare, plans for the encouragement of 

 letters divided his mind with those of conquest 

 and dominion ; and his reverence for exact and 

 recondite learning did not degenerate into a 

 pedantic hatred of all that was indigenous and 

 popular. While he established schools, filled his 

 court with men of erudition, and promoted the 

 cultivation of science, he did not shut his eyes to 

 the true though homely lustre of Teutonic genius. 

 He gathered, as has been previously stated, 

 partly from extant manuscripts, and partly from 

 oral recitation, the songs of the primitive bards ; 

 and bestowed great pains upon the improvement of 

 his vernacular dialect. The consequences of this 

 patriotic and enlightened patronage extended, in 

 the face of opposition, into succeeding reigns, 

 and kept up the genuine literature of the middle 

 ages. One portion, indeed, of the old poetry, 

 the strictly mythological portion, had fallen, 

 centuries before, together with the Runic charac- 

 ters and the superstitious rites in which they were 

 employed, beneath the spread of Christianity ; but 

 the half-historical, heroic verse retained its charm 

 and its popularity even after the epoch of Charle- 

 magne. The people still delighted in tales of 



A. D. 740814. 



